


Like There Aint No One Watching

by Miriam_Heddy



Category: Nathan Barley (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-23 02:36:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4859807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miriam_Heddy/pseuds/Miriam_Heddy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Jones watched Dan Ashcroft dance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like There Aint No One Watching

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to qwertysweetea for the timely and kind Brit-beta.

"Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own."  
\--Erica Jong

 

1.  
Jones has to take one hand off the decks and use it to cover his mouth the first time he sees Dan Ashcroft dance.

At least he thinks it's meant to be dancing. Dan's found the beat well enough--though that's not saying much as Jones' mix is vibrating the floor and everyone's fillings, and even the Deaf couple he saw signing at a table earlier are up on their feet and looking well graceful. Seeing them in the club, Jones cranked up the bass more than usual.

So Dan's got the beat, but he don't know what to do with it. He's swivelling his hips in a way that's got Jones' attention only because he's already more than a bit obsessed with the idea of fitting his pelvis up against Dan's, either in front or behind don't matter, and frotting with their clothes on or fucking without them. Again, Jones is flexible. 

 

2.  
He's seen Dan Ashcroft dance more times than is probably healthy. All it's done is make him wonder how a musically-oriented person such as himself could be sexually drawn to someone who dances like one of them film robots what's been nearly destroyed but, with the last of its power, jerks around short-circuiting.

Thing is, when not dancing, Dan is just the sort of big, handsome, scruffy Northern bloke what always got Jones' attention, though he didn't generally rub elbows--much less pricks--with blokes of that sort outside his vivid imagination.

If Jones had to describe his type, Dan's photo would be the one he showed. Dan, sat behind his typewriter, fag in his mouth, typewriter clicking madly. Not Dan dancing. 

Sadly, the types of clubs Jones played now drew twinks, and twats, and the blokes Dan called idiots, and birds with bright hair that looked like Jones (but with tits), but it rarely drew Dan-types or even not-quite-Dan-types. 

Dan was an outsider, and he'd be well out-of-place even sat at a table. Even if the club was alright, Dan knew how to keep from fitting in. He'd shift in his chair and hunch over so it looked like he was sat in a child's chair. Or he'd keep a scowl on his face all night and ensure everyone around him was just as miserable.

Why Dan was here at all on nights where he weren't reviewing a local band, well, Jones didn't rightly know. He reckoned Dan might not like being alone in the flat, but Alone was nearly Dan's middle name.

Jones thought Dan belonged in the kind of moody, end of the road piano bar Humphrey Bogart liked, saying, "Play it again, Sam" instead of writing things like, "The Writhing Dingoes, ostensibly from Oz, have the talent to go far--ideally Siberia, where the locals might well be starved for the kind of tuneless, witless, joyless playing that speaks to today's youth by blowing smoke up their arses whilst staying well away from originality or anything else that might challenge their young knobs." His latest review read: "Hull's Only Timekeeper (which abbreviates, quite inaccurately, as HOT) is currently on tour, offering hope that Hull may replace them with a timekeeper who can actually keep time. Onstage, HOT's members display the remarkable ability to sing simultaneously behind, ahead of, and on the beat in a manner which suggests a profound misunderstanding of jazz."

Like Bogie, Dan was a right tosspot much of the time, though Jones had decided long ago he could work on that the way water wore down stones, smoothing the rough edges into something good to hold. He'd made some progress on that front. Dan was still jagged and with a cutting wit, but he also smiled now and then, and he wasn't a moody drunk no more--nor any kind of drunk at all--since the git broke his own leg, Claire's heart, and Jones'...well, it was his heart that got broke worst of all, moreso than did Claire's, who resented Dan enough she took his injuries as just punishment for all the times he'd made her life miserable. Jones had seen enough to know Claire had good reason to hate Dan nearly as much as she loved him (and she loved him quite a lot), though the berk didn't seem to know it.

Jones had, 'til then, no reason to feel much of anything. He'd intended to treat Dan the way he'd treated all the others who'd drifted in and out of the House of Jones, with good humour but without compromising his life, professional nor personal. But Dan didn't simply bed down on the floor as the others had when the rent was due and the bank empty. Dan brought his sister with him and, instead of moving on after a short stay, he'd claimed the sofa as his own, and she'd claimed the bedroom, and, before Jones could object, there were long hairs clogging the drain and crumpled up A4 filling up the bin, and Dan was sometimes adding money to the ramen and booze fund, and hotting up enough tea for two (three if Claire were around to glare at him).

And then there were the days when Dan was throwing biros at him like daggers in a circus show because he couldn't get inspired to write, or telling him his music was "signifying nothing" with that arch way of his, as if only blokes like Dan knew of Shakespeare. Jones had once gone to Stratford even, staying in one of those youth hostels with the three-high bunks. He'd even done the tour and read about Anne's second-best bed. The way he saw it, she were lucky old Will didn't leave her the floor and give the bed to that bloke on the side.

As for Dan, who had Jones' second-best sofa, Claire's theory was, once you got to caring for him, and after he started to worry he might care for you, he worked to push you away like one of them magnets always turning against every other magnet. It was like Dan knew that, if he turned the other way, he might start clinging to you and get stuck there.

Jones already was. Stuck. Though Dan didn't know how Jones felt and likely never would. Jones expected he'd never tell Dan, and Dan wasn't one of them empathic types that knew what anyone else was feeling just by looking them in the eye. Which might account for Dan's usually keeping his squinty eyes on the floor, or gazing into what he said was "the middle distance" where, Jones reckoned, Dan found some semblance of peace.

Jones'd spent a good, long time pretending it weren't nothing--long enough he'd almost come to believe the lie. But then Dan started feeling a touch better; the pills he came home from hospital with seemed to do something to help him see life weren't out to get him.

And each time Jones reckoned he was moving on and ready to find a warm body without complications, Dan smiled and Jones fell for him all over again, each time landing a bit harder, and each time hoping he might learn to fly.

 

3.  
Dan was healed up, and they'd seen to it he now had as little contact as possible with those that drove him to jump out a window. That twat Nathan Barley still followed him around, though at a distance now.

When Dan was just out of hospital and still cranky with pain, Jones had coaxed him out for a coffee. Barley spotted him and looked like a kid whose mother'd hit him hard enough to take him by surprise. He stopped mid-swagger and, when Dan noticed him, he looked terrified, like he were going to faint into someone's lap. Then he gave Dan a "you don't scare me only 'cause I could outrun you now" look and came over to the table, pulling up a chair to straddle. Dan was having none of it and took in a mouthful of steaming hot coffee and spit it right in Barley's face. No words at all passed between 'em. It was inspired. Dan didn't say nothing, neither--only sat and looked at Barley like he wasn't even visible but for the coffee dripping onto his shirt.

But Barley was imprinted on Dan like a duckling, and no amount of Dan's charm could break that bond. If he weren't a bit worried Dan might eventually kill Barley for real, Jones might've enjoyed their meet ups, but at least they gave Dan an outlet aside from Jones.

So Dan was still Dan, broke and put back together again like Humpty Dumpty weren't. He was always rough edges, but now there were seams where the old pieces didn't quite fit together anymore.

Except when he wrote. When he wrote, he was better than ever. He made music with his words--mixing verbs, and adjectives, and nouns like a lingual dervish. Jones kept clippings of Dan's work and liked to record bits and phrases of him and mix them way down so only someone in the know would recognize them.

Though none of that verbal talent translated to dancing. Jones was surprised no one had yet phoned 999, as Dan on the dance floor, kitted out in a plaid button-down over a t-shirt and jeans (all well unfashionable) looked to be having a seizure, throwing shapes out randomly like Thor throwing out lightning bolts. Kazam! Zzzp! Pow!

Jones could almost see the electricity leaving his fingertips and scorching tables, the sticky floor, and the other dancers who, aside from a few rolled eyes, mostly ignored him. The antipathy was mutual. Whilst others kept an eye out for new steps to follow, Dan had his own inspiration, dug up from some primal source. Jones would've admired him only, even for him, it was a bit silly to see done by a bloke of Dan's age and temperament.

On the dance floor, all the bitter fury that drove Dan was transformed to this free-form flailing.

When the one piece ended and Jones had flowed seamlessly into the next, Dan pulled his arms in by his sides, arms bent at the elbow, his body jerking to and fro. Jones had seen geezers at a wedding doing the chicken dance once they'd done with Hava Nagila. This was worse, as the lot of drunken wedding guests making fools of themselves were usually laughing and well aware they were rubbish.

Jones' mix for the club was not the sort played at weddings. Though if he and Dan ever got to marrying, he'd come up with something special.

Dan's narrow eyes were shut down to slits and he had a smug smile on his face, and if anyone had ever told him he couldn't dance to save his life, he'd not heard them.

 

4.  
Jones' music was playing (and always was if he was at home) when Dan got in, shut the door loudly behind him, pulled Jones out from behind his gear, and slammed him up against the wall like a copper arresting a con on one of them old American gangster films Dan liked to watch.

Jones didn't ask why, nor offer much in the way of a struggle. Wasn't much of a reason when Dan put his left hand flat on the wall beside Jones' head and used the other to unbutton and unzip Jones' trousers, yanking them down to his thighs before pulling his pants down as well.

Dan's movements were brutal in a way what might raise a few bruises but also set Jones' prick hard in seconds. He might've asked "what?" or "why?", but he knew the answers were likely beyond Dan's reach if he were in this state, with a low growling at the back of his throat standing in for his usual, "Alright Jones."

He'd expected, if Dan wanted him, there might be just the smallest touch of romance the first time--an awkward hug or a drunken kiss. But this felt right--especially as Dan had the good sense not to try fucking him dry, and only unzipped and pressed his erection against Jones' bare arse before coming all over him after a few stuttering thrusts, all without so much as touching Jones' own prick.

Jones might've brought himself off, then, but Dan pushed himself upright just enough to turn Jones around, then the big man got down on his knees, putting his big hands on Jones' hips. 

"Think I might love you." Dan mumbled the sentiment to Jones' prick.

"Mutual," Jones managed, meaning to say a good deal more but Dan began what might be the best blowie Jones had ever had.

 

5.  
The only steps Dan had down to an art turned out to be the horizontal tango, the no pants dance, and the mattress jig. 

Over time, and with Jones' help, his repertoire expanded to include the sixty-nine, the penis polka, and sodomy, which was really only a dance when they did it to music.

Music was Jones' specialty, but, if they were somewhere real quiet--like up against the door in the loo of the library--Jones was usually willing to hum a tune if it got Dan's hips to moving. Lucky for the both of them, Jones had always rated enthusiasm higher than style when it came to making love.


End file.
